One lone cat against a big bad world

Category Archives: Diary

Last Thursday I decided to start using the 8fit app on my phone as far as me working out goes. I originally started using the app early last year but when everything got screwed up I wasn’t able to resume it until now especially with my weight loss going so well.

Right now, I’m really feeling it in my thighs and my arms (not to mention my sunburned shoulders from both mowing yesterday morning and going out on the Canal Trail yesterday afternoon) but at the same time I have never been better. And each of the 8fit workouts I have completed so far have been at least several minutes in length, even though it feels more like I’ve been working out for an hour. And I have also added my ab roller to do about 100 crunches.

I usually finish each workout by drinking some chocolate milk because when I was in college, my gym teacher suggested drinking chocolate milk after each workout for protein instead of protein shakes. In many ways, chocolate milk probably is preferable to shelling out 30 to 40 bucks for a big jug of protein shake powder at work.

And I am starting to see some results in terms of my physical appearance. My gut’s still there but it looks like my abs are starting to show. Pretty soon I should be able to take some shirtless pics.

Unfortunately, I might have to wait to see about a gym membership because I got a new property tax bill that’s not due till next month and I may have to buy a chainsaw or something on Thursday because yard work that’s why.

Also last payday, I managed to pick up two Stephen King books, including his latest book The Outsider and it’s pretty good. I managed to read through it the night I bought it. He’s got another one coming out around Halloween and I can’t wait to pick it up.

Got less than two more weeks of work left before I go on vacation, which ties in with my folks going to another show in New Hampshire that weekend. Last year, I went to their place but this year it looks like I will be at the shop that weekend. At the same time, I can utilize that time to continue working on myself and other things.

It’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks for me and a very good one too, especially when it comes to my weight loss and my social media career.

As of last Tuesday, my weight went down to 227 pounds which means that I have lost nearly 35 pounds in just eight weeks. For me, it’s a big accomplishment especially since I’ve wrestled with my weight throughout my life. But now I think I may finally be starting to get it together.

And that’s not all. I think I may have found the platform that can replace YouTube for me as far as popularity goes. Since I decided to up my Instagram game, I have started to see more likes on my content, whether it’s the cat memes I post or the hot women pics I post every Wednesday for Woman Crush Wednesday or just random pics from my day-to-day life. I started posting pics of my scale documenting my weight loss journey and that was well-received. Now I wish I had posted a before pic of 261-pound me back in April. But other than that, things are going really well.

Throughout my social media career, I found it important to check my demographics for people who view my content. On YouTube, my core audience was male and a majority of my viewers came from the U.S. and Western countries made up the rest of my top viewers. However on Instagram, I noticed a change. On Instagram, while half my audience is in the U.S., I noticed that more than half my core audience is women and Eastern countries are rounding out the top five countries and out of that number I noticed that ten percent of that number comes from Ukraine (they’re second behind the U.S.) followed by Russia. Pretty awesome that I’m pretty much known all over the world even though I’m just a 40-year-old blue-collar American guy from New York.

Also my job recently updated their dress code policy so it’s a little more lenient and I just gotta say that it feels good to not wear collared shirts to work anymore. I feel more normal now.

The weather has gotten better out over the last couple weeks. We had two ninety-degree days back-to-back and last Tuesday I managed to go back to the Canal Trail. However, I couldn’t hang out over by the ruins over by the Fort Herkimer Church because there’s construction going on. And today, I had to watch the shop because my folks are away at a show this weekend and it was a pretty slow day today. But I managed to get some editing done on an older video I am planning to put up on the site.

And I guess that was it for the last two weeks. A very good couple of weeks which I guessing is the start of some kind of comeback for me. Now if I can just get my Facebook page to 100 likes so I can get added features to my page. And I have been thinking about possibly going back to the gym at Herkimer College. I think I can get a membership as an alumni but I won’t be able to do it this time. Maybe next check I might be able to. I’ll have to wait and see.

This has been a long and tiring week for me. In fact, it was so exhausting that I almost nodded off at the shop Wednesday evening before my folks arrived. It was a slow day that day so I ended up going home a half-hour early and I went to bed early. I think that part of it was because I was up late after painting my back door and I had to leave it open to dry.

I’m pretty close to another breakthrough in terms of my weight loss. I got on the scale Thursday morning and saw that my weight had dropped another three pounds to 232, which puts me at almost 30 pounds lost. I usually weigh myself every three to four days so that way I don’t jinx myself in case I regain weight.

And I also learned one thing when commenting on an Instagram model’s account when she doesn’t speak English, Google Translate is your friend. That way, you can respond to her in her native language. In my case, I was responding to a Ukrainian Instagram model.

As far as today went, it was raining as I went to Crazy Otto’s Empire Diner for breakfast. Boy, their pancakes were huge (or as Donald Trump would say “Yuge”). The Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was this morning. I didn’t watch it because I didn’t want to be bored like I was the last time there was a Royal Wedding which I had to watch at work several years ago. I really don’t give a crap about it.

Anyway, I had to watch the shop today being that my folks were away at a show on Long Island this weekend. It was slow here because of the rain today and I had at least one sale.

And after that I was off to see something more important than the Royal Wedding: Deadpool 2. I was originally planning to go last night but I was so tired from work yesterday that I just went home and crashed.

The other day, as I was leaving work I noticed that one side of the DVD rack had all of the DVD’s and Blu-Rays had every movie with Deadpool on the cover which is part of the marketing ploy for Deadpool 2. And as always, I saw a social media opportunity and took a pic of it and posted on Instagram saying that Deadpool was in virtually every movie ever made!

So after getting out of The Rose Quartz Stand, I went home and changed into one of my new Deadpool T-shirts before heading to Walmart to pick up a cab to Little Falls. This was my first car ride since leaving downstate. I found Affordable Cab’s prices to be reasonable enough. Only cost me ten bucks each way.

When I got there, I made a joke that I was actually there to see Avengers: Infinity War even though I was clearly wearing a Deadpool T-shirt. In truth, I decided to pre-order Infinity War on Vudu (Walmart’s version of Netflix) instead because I felt that it would be better if I watched that at home.

There was a big crowd there because it’s opening weekend for Deadpool 2. And I had a lot of fun at that movie. In fact, I thought it was better than the first one. I’m probably not going to review it but I did enjoy it.

So in short, today was another good day despite the rain. Even if I only got out to see one movie this year, I’m glad it was Deadpool.

Before we get started today, I just wanted to share this pic I took of Crazy Otto’s Empire Diner at night that I took while leaving Borunda Asian Buffet last Wednesday night. I decided that this pic was too good to pass up.

And here’s an update on my weight loss. Going into this week, I am down an additional four pounds which puts me at 235 pounds. Still doing good, especially since a good chunk of my “diet” consists of drinking tons of water and drinking unsweetened green tea when I go to Dunkin Donuts when I’m at work. And to think that I did this in a month’s time is pretty damn awesome.

After work on Sunday, I finally managed to really test out my new mower that I got through Walmart.com last week. And apart from the fact that there were times where the grass bag kept popping off, it worked pretty well. And I was able to fill all five of my tubs that I use whenever I do yard work with grass so I could put them out on the curb for the town to collect, which they do on Monday mornings. And I also found out that a weed whacker that was left behind at my house still works. I just need to get a replacement blade which I might do this Thursday for pay day.

There wasn’t much that has been going on today. It rained in the morning when I went to work at The Rose Quartz Stand. It cleared up when I left at noon. Had lunch at Borunda and then after that, I went home and finally started working out. Nothing major. Just did some work with the resistance band and I also managed to dig out my Ab Roller that has been sitting in my closet forever before going back to the shop.

And after going back to the shop, I picked up turkey burgers for dinner and decided to try and finish painting my back door. Managed to get it completely coated. I may have to put another coat on but now I have both doors painted.

In short, I can hardly believe that it’s been a year that I have been living alone after my sister moved out to Buffalo with my nephews. How the time does fly.

“The years have a way of slipping by, of changing the world around us and every boy sooner or later must put away his toys and become a man.” – Peter Parker- Amazing Spider-Man #50

I spent a lot of time thinking about what direction I want to take the site in since I decided to quit YouTube after all the controversy surrounding losing my partnership and the Ad-pocalypse last year and I have come to the conclusion that after I get all of my videos from YouTube up to the site, it may be time to say that I am done with web series and regular vlogging (One Lone Cat) and going back to writing and some other things.

Does this mean that I am going to stop video-making after doing it for 10 years? Well I’ll do some random stuff here and there but I just think that it’s finally time to move on. I’ll also consider doing some podcasts as well. Also, considering my always-busy schedule I miss writing. So I’ll see how this goes.

For starters, it’s nice to know that nice weather has finally arrived in my neck of the woods after a very long winter. The last two days have been gorgeous out. And I have started working my semi-regular hours at The Rose Quartz Stand at the beginning of the month where I work a split shift on Tuesdays from 10 am to noon then come back from 5 to 6 at night and I work from 5 to 7 at night on Wednesdays (like I am as I’m writing this) which means I go to the shop right after my real job.

In addition to that, I might be working some gem shows this year, such as the Herkimer Gem and Mineral Show in July as well as Herkimer Diamond Days in August. So this is all a new experience for me.

Yesterday I worked a full day at the shop till 7, closing only because I had a delivery arrive at the house. Last weekend, I made my first purchase on the Walmart.com app: A new lawn mower. It’s an electric lawn mower rather than the gas ones that I’ve used for years, which means it’s more environmentally-friendly. It’s also lightweight and it can fit in my house too so no need to leave it outside.

Plus an update on my weight loss. As of Sunday, I was down to 239 pounds for a total of 22 pounds lost since the beginning of April. Pretty soon I should be ready to start working out again.

Well, to close this out I just want to say that it’s been a wild ride throughout my 10 years as a video-making and it will be nice to take a break and get back to writing because I have a very busy schedule going forward into this summer. Now let’s hope that I can keep this going for as long as I can.